yes it does make difference , i used DriveGuard to boot the usb img on completely new hardware before learning process/

Interesting.... But difficult to really make any conclusions.On top of some possibly unadvertised effects, the obvious effect of activation is that DriveGuard makes removable media appear as fixed (which it does not, when not activated).I have been speculating that this may have important consequences... So I decided to persist with trying to use dummy.sys...

For months I've been using the historical install procedure by Dietmar, which worked for me when booting flat files, but I always got a BSOD when installed in an IMG (not 7B, but I can't remember the specific error code at the moment). And then I found this very useful post by wimb, which explains that the ENUM part of the registry tweak should not be used !! So simple, so obvious... and that makes the difference !

In other words, I have now this XP IMG on USB, with dummy.sys installed. i can boot on my NC10 laptop and all removable media appear as fixedBut I still get the same BSOD 7B on the Dell laptop, and the timing of events is still exactly the same as in my first experiment !

So it seems making removable media appear as fixed is not key to our problem...

Particularly, "dummydisk.sys" has been able to filter ON-THE-FLY the install of all NEW (so never previously recognized) and pre-partitioned USB Flash Drives without the need to PRE-RECOGNIZE them

but if true, that's something really useful indeed !Still I would really like to understand why.....The USB device needs to be driven properly, i.e. there has to be a corresponding CDDB entry. Why making the removable media appear as fixed would relax this requirement ?

Still I would really like to understand why.....The USB device needs to be driven properly, i.e. there has to be a corresponding CDDB entry. Why making the removable media appear as fixed would relax this requirement ?

STOP 0x7B is caused when Windows attempts to open the ARC path from BOOT.INI and fails. Disks have nothing to do with it, except that the ARC path is usually a symbolic link to a partition on a disk.

The ARC path symbolic links can be generated by any driver, but for the disk case, they are generated based on matching a disk's MBR signature to that passed on by NTLDR.

hi everyone, Ive been reading this thread and its way over my head but intresting to me. anyway.. I have some info that may be helpful or not. it was because of this thread I tried something that solved a problem for me with usboot/xp.

I was having trouble getting my garmin gps to be recognised in windows explorer by my usboot xp (booted from usbhdd) the usboot xp explorer would recognise the sd card that was inserted into the gps unit but not the internal storage of the gps however it was being shown in disk managment but as fully unallocated which it wasnt.

from reading this thread I got the idea to remove/uninstall driveguard and that in turn made the gps accessable in the usboot/xp explorer. great!

now theres a problem with driveguard removed because when I insert another usb flash drive with multiple partitions the usboot/xp can only see the first one. if I reinstall drive guard it can see all of the partitions. not a big deal and now I understand why other non usb boot systems havent been seeing the multipartitioned usb flashdrive. is there another way to have them recognise the extra partitions other than drive guard? preferably something I dont have to install with a reboot.

just weird that with drivegaurd installed, the usboot/xp can see multipartitioned usb flashdrives but not my gps's internal flashdrive and the opposite when driveguard is removed. I thought that was worth mentioning but I have no idea why.

way off topic here but I have nowhere else to ask but if I can figure out why mapsource/basecamp maps are only accessable from flash memory (SD cards, USB Flashdrives, etc.) and not directly from HDD this is something that is not a unique problem, its the way these programs were designed for some reason and the same for everyone. the problem is that some of these maps are 2gb and load slow from flash. we need them to load from hdd but how to trick these programs and make them think a traditional disk drive is a flash drive? is there something in the disk signatures that can be changed? as I said I have no where else to ask that would have a chance of insight into this situation. thanks

great thread! I think I need to read it a couple of more times.. lots to learn here.

just weird that with drivegaurd installed, the usboot/xp can see multipartitioned usb flashdrives but not my gps's internal flashdrive and the opposite when driveguard is removed.

For all removable media, Windows can only access the first partition. That's by design in windows.If you want to access other partitions, the only way is to make the drive appear as fixed. Which is exactly what DriveGuard does.So that explains why your usboot/xp (with driveguard) can see multipartitioned usb flashdrives, but it's very strange that it can't see your gps's internal flashdrive... Unless there is something about it that DriveGuard doesn't like.

is there another way to have them recognise the extra partitions other than drive guard? preferably something I dont have to install with a reboot.

To install dummy.sys, don't make the same mistake as me... Check a couple of posts above.With either of these drivers installed, you should be able to see your multipartitioned flashdrive,it would however be interesting to let us know if you can see your gps's internal flashdrive, or if it disappears, similarly to what happens with DriveGuard installed.

Also, and just for the record, usually it is possible to find the actual USB stick controller "manufacturer software" and "flip the bit", making the USB stick appear as a "Fixed device", thus having not anymore any need for a "Filter Driver" such as dummydisk.sys or cfadisk.sys (or driveguard).

Well, apparently it was not meant to be for that monday.... Perhaps this one ?

No offense really.... I'm just being cheeky !! We're all pretty busy I suppose, and life imposes its priorities on us sometimes !I just didn't want my silence be considered as a lack of interest.... It is rather the opposite !! I am really looking forward to trying the next WinVBlock version !

This thread is about booting XP from Image file on USB and describes the BSOD 7B boot problem that for most cases is solved now.

Your method is about Install of XP from USB, so that is quite a different subject.May be you can give details about the procedure that you propose and make comparison with allready working solutions described at MSFN forum.

4. You can also first boot with PE or e.g. Portable XP from USB and then mount your XP Setup ISO in ImDisk Virtual driveand use WinNTSetup2_x86.exe to prepare your TargetDrive for Install of XP.JFX - WinNTSetup v2.1 - http://www.msfn.org/...winntsetup-v21/

i used another way of installing xp-sp3 to ext usb hdd, described here (http://www.techspot....opic116114.html). in short, i modified install media so it sets up usbstor, usbhub, usbport, esbXhci to be loaded in first place and never being unloaded/reloaded (moved them to boot bus extenders group). then i installed xp-sp3 from this modified installation media on an external usb3 hdd stad750202 running p5k (ich9r) machine with no sata drives connected (so that first-stage installer won't mess with internal hdd mbr). everything boots ok, no matter if i connect or disconnect internal sata hdd now. after that i tried to boot on another machine p6e-ws - everything was ok too. both these machines had raid controllers and so, but didn't required iastor.

now the problem is: i'm trying to boot with this system on fs-lifebook ls7020 and getting 0x7b error. i've read the whole topic and still didn't find a way to boot. can someone plz hlp me a bit?p.s.: adding iastor entries to cddb doesn't workp.p.s: using waitbt driver causes x10 'no signature found' and bsod 0x7b

now the problem is: i'm trying to boot with this system on fs-lifebook ls7020 and getting 0x7b error. i've read the whole topic and still didn't find a way to boot. can someone plz hlp me a bit?p.s.: adding iastor entries to cddb doesn't workp.p.s: using waitbt driver causes x10 'no signature found' and bsod 0x7b

I am not sure to understand the logic , if you used this:http://www.techspot....opic116114.htmlwhy not asking for help in it's Forum?:http://www.techspot.com/OR try repeatig the steps here.These are very complex topics, and it is UNprobable that you can "mix" things, there could be n reasons why you get a 0x0000007b, however first thing that comes to mind, are you using the "Dietmar's" modified NTDETECT.COM?

Have you some ways to connect to the offline Registry in the USB thingy and check Start status of the various USB related services?

The 0x0000007b Stop Error means "inaccessible boot device" and should be independent from the internal hard disk and it's drivers, i.e. if you don't have (or don't have properly installed) the appropriate drivers for the internal hard disk in your build, what should happen is that you cannot see/access the internal hard disk, but the OS should boot nonetheless.